Design, Architecture, Gardens, Southern California Living

Summer style: Outdoor chairs that strike a chord

June 29, 2012 | 11:31
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We're calling them airy chairs: outdoor seats whose wire or cord construction makes for an easy, breezy sensibility — the it look of summer, light in silhouette but not on style. We've chosen a sampling of chairs in a range of prices. Higher-end designs tend to have more refinements: Ligne Roset’s Fifty chair and ottoman, pictured here, has a steel frame that has been treated to protect against corrosion and lacquered in polyester so it’s cool to touch (no sear marks on thighs, thank you very much). Nearly 1,150 feet of UV-resistant polypropylene rope are strung into a cool silhouette that cocoons you in comfort. The Ligne Roset chair retails for $1,435, the ottoman for $525, but we have some other picks that are as much a comfort to your wallet as they are to your back and feet.

From left: Valentina, whose slatted seat floats on a breezy steel-tube frame, is on clearance at CB2. Originally $179, it’s $69.95 while supplies last. The black Antwerp chair from Viva Terra, $389, spins its web from recycled metal. Then there's the Högsten outdoor armchair, IKEA’s modern riff on rattan, with the polyethylene seat woven around a steel frame powder-coated in white polyester. It's $89.99. Photo credits, from left: CB2, Viva Terra, IKEA.

Working for the Italian manufacturer Gervasoni, design icon Paola Navone created the InOut collection, which we saw premiered at the Milan furniture fair.

The aluminum-framed chairs and chaises are strung with cloud-white polypropylene cord or glossy white PVC slats. For pricing and availability, Gervasoni’s U.S. representative: www.imoderni.com.

Photo credits: Gervasoni.

New for 2012: the Kobi chair designed by Patrick Norguet. The steel shell sits atop enameled aluminum or oak-veneered aluminum legs, with cushions in three styles. Prices start at $633 through Suite New York. Photo credit: Suite NY.

L.A.-based Bend Seating’s wire chairs are the hot pick of summer. Since we first featured the hand-welded designs more than a year ago, designer Gaurav Nanda’s collection has taken off.

The collection has expanded to include four wire patterns, three colors and one version that’s an indoor-outdoor counter stool. Readers also made it the top vote-getter in our poll to declare the California look of 2011, a follow-up to an L.A. Times feature declaring the California look back in 1961.

The Bend chairs are $450 to $495, with optional cushions for $35 to $49. We're still digging the orange, right, as well as Bend's new wire trophy heads. Photo credits: Bend Seating.

At left: Sixties is the apt name for the woven resin chair from the French design firm Fermob, which recently released Sixties as a bench too. The chair comes in four color combinations and is $488 through Yliving.com. At right: The Acapulco Rocker’s vinyl cord is strung on a steel frame, like a hammock in chair form. Sway in a choice of 11 colors. The suggested retail is $480, and it's sold through Weego Home in Santa Monica, Haus USA in Los Angeles, Inside Out 365 in Costa Mesa and manufacturer Innit. Photo credits, from left: Fermob, Innit.

Venice designer Ilan Dei premiered his Cord Collection of outdoor furnishings last month. Vinyl cord in a range of hues wraps powder-coated steel tubing. The sofa, $2,999, can be complemented with an ottoman, dining chair or bench, some of which can be seen in our original post on the collection's premiere.

The lounge chair, $799, at left, can be complemented with an ottoman, sofa, dining chair or bench.

Photo credits: Ashley Hetrick.

For a more organic look, California-based Henry Hall Designs has a new design called Serene, made of an all-weather synthetic fiber woven by hand onto a teak frame.

The lounge chair is pictured at right. The chaise, above, is stackable, as is the dining chair and side table.

And finally, The Oyler Wu Collaborative showed prototypes of its indoor-outdoor furniture. Jenny Wu said the prototype chaise is made of polypropylene rope and power-coated steel for outdoor use, but the studio is looking at other rope options. Photo credit: Oyler Wu.

CORRECTED: An earlier version of this post misspelled Fermob as Fernmob.